FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ICE RINK - PAGE 5

Bethlehem's outdoor ice rink is beloved for its nostalgic feel -- a genuine 1950s-era amusement where skaters can still feel the nip of winter on their noses while spinning, pirouetting and sometimes even falling. A relic of another era, the rink is feeling its age. At 52, the pipes that run through the concrete pad are leaking a brine solution. Brine keeps the ice cold. The dasherboard -- the partitions that surround the ice -- also needs to be replaced. City workers have patched the wooden partitions over the years, but a safer system is needed.

In the wake of Thursday's public appeal from Bethlehem Steel Corp. to rezone its 160 South Side acres for virtually any kind of development, Mayor Ken Smith was confident City Council will grant the request. The $500 the company paid to use the Hotel Bethlehem's ballroom for its town meeting, at which the conceptual development plans were unveiled, appeared to pay off. One Lehigh Valley businessman after another stood in the ballroom to express support for the rezoning, calling it the best way to turn the desolate structures of the South Side into tax-producing enterprises once again.

Bethlehem City Council reviewed the administration's six-year capital improvements plan last night, complete with "pipedream" projects: a roof over the municipal ice rink, and conversion of Memorial Pool into an indoor swimming facility. Those projects are among the items in the $19.6 million plan, $8.1 million of which would be financed by borrowing over the term. Federal and state grants, liquid fuels money and several miscellaneous sources also are listed. Big-ticket items with funding include the replacement of the Union Boulevard Bridge at the Route 378 entrance ($1.3 million by 1995)

Alvin Baldinger of the Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs will present checks totaling $80,000 for Bethlehem's ongoing renovation of Saucon Park at a ceremony this morning in the park. Mayor Paul Marcincin said the presentation would take place at the newly paved main parking lot in the central park area. Planning Director Samuel Guttman said the money is part of a federal Land and Water Conservation Grant awarded several years ago for building a roof over the municipal ice rink.

A deal with PPL Corp. could help Bethlehem heal its long-suffering ice rink without asking taxpayers for the $330,000 needed to fix it. After a skating season in which ailing compressors forced the popular ice rink to open a month late and close two weeks early, Bethlehem has agreed to hire PPL to replace its ice-making system. The deal is expected not only to end the city's decade-long struggle to keep the rink going but also to result in savings from the new, more efficient equipment, which will pay for the entire project, said Charlie Brown, Bethlehem's director of parks and public property.

The members of the Leadership Lehigh Valley Class of 1995 has taken on Parks Gift Program as the class project. They were at the West Side Park, 13th and Lehigh streets, Bethlehem, at 8 a.m. Saturday to demonstrate what can be done by citizens who want better parks. Their cleaning, planting and repairing launched an ongoing project to make it easier for people to help their parks. The class produced a brochure that will be distributed in the communities and made available at city offices.

I cannot understand why Bethlehem waited so long to work on the ice rink knowing last year that this needed to be done. Why did the city wait so long to get started on such a big project knowing that the skating season was coming up? Workers had to dig up pipes and lay a new concrete floor, which could have been done in the summer or at least in the fall. It's a shame that all the kids who go skating there every year are missing out on a great winter activity, and the city is missing out on all the money the place brings in. It gives the kids something to do during the winter.

The developers of the RCN Center skating facility in Bethlehem Works think things go better with Coke -- especially now that they have signed a five-year sponsorship deal with the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of the Lehigh Valley. "We have an agreement with them that will include Coca-Cola providing scoreboards and product for us to sell," said Jim Galley, one of three partners in the Paramount Pavilion Group. "It's a good deal for us." Coca-Cola will purchase and place logos of various products on a four-sided scoreboard that will hang over one of the arena's two rinks, two wall-mounted scoreboards and a portable scoreboard that can be used outdoors at the in-line skating center.

The post-Christmas, frigid January blahs were wiped out in Bethlehem yesterday as city officials gleefully announced getting a $1 million state grant for many projects long in their dreams. The revitalization grant through the Department of Community and Economic Development will allow the city to put a roof over the Illick's Mill Road ice rink, provide clubhouses for the Northeast Little League baseball and Raiders football teams, equip police with laptop computers and help buy a new pumper for the Fire Department.